Calling A Phone Sex Line
| Field | Communications |
| Went Obsolete | Late 1990s, early 2000s |
| Made Obsolete By | Widespread use of the Internet to distribute all forms of pornography |
| Knowledge Assumed | Dialing a telephone, paying astronomical phone bills |
| When useful | When you didn't have a date and listening to someone “talk dirty” on the phone was enough for you to get your jollies |
The availability of pay-per-minute and pay-per-call services of all types exploded in the late 1980s and early 1990s. One particularly popular services was the phone sex line, where callers would listen to people do things such as have graphic conversations about sex, or even listen on while the operator is supposedly having sex with another person. The vast majority of these services would pass billing back through your phone carrier and the charges for the services would show up on your next phone bill and the bills for these services could run into the thousands of dollars per month.
As phone sex lines grew in popularity, as with other segments of the adult entertainment industry, sex lines cropped up to serve every imaginable demographic, sexual desire and fetish. The back pages of most adult magazines were filled with nothing but ads for phone sex lines. As the Internet gained more widespread acceptance, phone sex lines began to decline. In particular, the more widespread availability of broadband Internet access to peoples' homes signaled the further decline of phone sex lines. These began to be replaced by pornographic websites where content was either available free or for a subscription fee.
